The Golbin Tower
L. Sprague De Camp
Chapter One
A LENGTH OF ROPE
"A CURIOUS CUSTOM," SAID THE BARBARIAN, "TO CUT OFF your king's head every five years. I wonder your throne finds any takers!"
On the scaffold, the headsman brushed a whetstone along the gleaming edge of his ax, dropped the stone into his pouch, squinted along the blade, and touched it here and there with his thumb. Those in the crowd below could not see his satisfied smile because of the black hood, which—save for the eye holes—covered his head. The ax was neither a woodcutter's tool nor a warrior's weapon. Whereas its helve, carven of good brown oak, was that of a normal ax, its blue steel head was un-wontedly broad, like a butcher's cleaver.
The scaffold rose in the midst of the drill ground, outside of the walls of Xylar City near the South Gate. Here, nearly all the folk of the city were gathered, as well as hundreds from outlying towns and villages. Around the base of the scaffold, a battalion of pikemen in black meshmail over scarlet coats was ranked four deep, to make sure that no unauthorized person reached the scaffold during the ceremony, and likewise that the victim did not escape. The two outer ranks faced outward and the two inner, inward.
Around the three sides of the scaffold, the notables of Xylar, in crimson and emerald and gold and white, sat on benches. Another rank of soldiers sundered the quality from the commonality. The latter, in brown and buff and black, stood in an expectant, amorphous mass, which filled the greater part of the field.
On the western side of the platform, this multitude surged against the inner ranks of soldiery. Here the throng consisted mainly of young men. Besides the hundreds of mechanics from the city and peasants from the farms, it included a sprinkling of the younger gentry. Hucksters wormed their way through this throng, selling cakes, sausages, fruits, sardines, wine, beer, cider, parasols, and good-luck charms. Outside the crowd of spectators, armored horsemen, with the scarlet hour-glass of Xylar on their white surcoats, patrolled the edge of the field.
Overhead, a white sun blazed in a cloudless sky. A puffy little wind ruffled the leaves of the oaks and poplars and gums that fenced the field. It fluttered the red-and-white pennants that streamed from the tops of the flagpoles at the corners of the scaffold. A few of the leaves of the gums had already turned from green to scarlet.
Seated among the notables, Chancellor Turonus answered the barbarian's question: "We have never had trouble in finding candidates, Prince Vilimir. Behold how they throng about the western side of the scaffold!"
"Will the head be thrown yonder?" asked Prince Vilimir around his forefinger, wherewith he was trying to pry loose a piece of roast from between his teeth. Although he was clean-shaven, Vilimir's long, light, gray-streaked hair, fur cap, fur jacket, and horsehide boots with the hair on gave him a shaggy look. His many massive ornaments of gold and silver tinkled when he moved. He had led the losing faction in an intertribal quarrel over who should be the next cham of the Gendings and hence was in exile. His rival, who was also his uncle, now ruled that fierce nomadic horde.
Turonus nodded. "Aye, and the catcher shall be our new king." He was stout and middle-aged, swathed in a voluminous azure cloak against the chill of the first cool day of autumn. "The Chief Justice will cast the thing yonder. It is a rule that the king must let his hair grow long, to give the judge something to grasp. Once a king had his whole head shaven the night before the ceremony, and the executioner had to pierce the ears for a cord. Most embarrassing."
"By Greipnek's beard, an ungrateful wight!" said Vilimir, a wolfish grin splitting his lean, scarred face. "As if a lustrum of royal luxe were not enough… Be that not King Jorian now?" The Shvenish prince spoke Novarian with fair fluency, but with a northern accent that made "Jorian" into "Zhorian."
"Aye," said the Chancellor, as a little procession marched slowly through the lane kept open by soldiers between the South Gate and the scaffold.
"He took me hunting last month," said Vilimir. "He struck me as a man of spirit—for a sessor, that is." He used a word peculiar to the nomads of Shven, meaning a non-nomad or sedentary person. Among nomads, the word was a term of contempt, but the Chancellor saw fit to ignore this. The exile continued: "I also found him a great talker—too much so for his own good, methinks, but amusing to listen to."
The Chancellor nodded absently, for the procession had now come close enough to recognize faces. First came the royal band, playing a dirge. Then paced the white-bearded Chief Justice of Xylar in a long, black robe, with a golden chain about his neck. Four halberdiers, in the midst of whom towered the king, followed. All those near the lane through which the party proceeded, and many in other parts of the field, sank to one knee as the king passed them.
King Jorian was a tall, powerful young man with a ruddy skin, deep-set black eyes, and coarse black hair that hung to his shoulders. His face, otherwise shaven, bore a fierce mustache that swept out like the horns of a buffalo. A prominent scar crossed his nose—which had a small kink in it—and continued diagonally down across his left cheek. He was stripped to his suppers and a pair of short, silken breeches, and his wrists were bound behind his back. A crown—a slender band of gold with a dozen short, blunt, erect spikes—was secured to his head by a chin strap.
Prince Vilimir murmured: "I have never seen a crown with a—how do you say it—a strap of the chin."
"It is needed, to keep crown and head together during the casting of the Lot of Imbal," explained Turonus. "Once, years ago, the crown came off as the head was thrown. One man caught the crown, another the head, and each claimed the throne. A sanguinary civil war ensued."
After the soldiers came a small, lean, dark-brown man in a coarse brown robe, with a bulbous white turban on his head. His long, silky, white hair and beard blew about. A rope was wound around his waist, and he bore a kind of satchel by a strap over his shoulder.
"The king's spiritual adviser," said Chancellor Turonus. "It seems hardly meet that the king of Xylar be sent off by a heathen from Mulvan, rather than by one of our own holy priests. But Jorian insisted, and it seemed but just to grant his last request."
"Who—how did the king come to know the fellow?" asked Vilimir.
Turonus shrugged. "For the past year, he has entertained all sorts of queer persons at the palace. This mountebank—your pardon, the Holy Father Karadur—drifted in, doubtless having fled in disgrace from his own land after having been caught in some vile goetic witchery."
Then came four beautiful young women, the king's wives. A fifth had given birth the day before and was judged not strong enough to attend the ceremony. The four present were gorgeous in silks and jewels and gold. After the wives came the shaven-headed, purple-robed high priest of Zevatas, the chief god of the Novarian pantheon; then a score of palace officials, and the ladies in waiting. Last of all came Kaeres the joiner, Xylar's leading director of funerals, and six cronies of the king carrying one of Kaeres' new coffins on their shoulders.
As the procession reached the foot of the scaffold, the band fell silent. After a low-voiced consultation, the Chief Justice mounted the steps of the scaffold, followed by two of the four halberdiers.
King Jorian kissed his four wives goodbye. They clung round his neck, weeping and covering his broad, heavy-featured face with kisses.
"Na, na," said Jorian in a heavy bass voice, with a rustic Kortolan accent. "Weep not, ma pretty lassies.